The Weight A Hero Can't Bear: Part 1
by FanofTrueLove
Summary: Set after Lana's departure Chloe worries for her friend and sends Oliver to check on him. What he finds out is probably the worst news anyone expected to hear. This is my first fanfiction so please rate and review.


"Something's not right," Chloe said as she stared with a worried look out at the Metropolis skyline from the Watchtower windows. The view in front of her would cause anyone to forget the problems of the world around them and just watch the world turn. But even on this cloudless morning, no matter how beautiful the sunrise, she couldn't help but fear the storm that may be coming. All morning she's had this feeling but just couldn't place what was causing her such unrest.

"Hey Chloe! How about you help me set up for the meeting, then figure out your spidey sense," Oliver said as he set up the various monitors hanging on the walls.

"Oliver I'm serious!" Chloe said with a small smile, peeling herself away from the stain glass window and starting to organize the various papers lying on her desk. "I know there's something wrong, things are almost never this calm around here. I mean when was the last time we had a police report about explosive toys being set off throughout the city?"

"O.K. you are definitely working too hard. I mean, seriously Chloe, do you hear yourself talking?" Oliver said as he leaned against the table trying to hide the smile spreading across his face.

Even Chloe had to admit it did sound crazy, if she was saying this to any other person they would think she was an escaped mental patient of Belle Reve. Luckily they weren't normal people, chasing down villains like Toyman is a normal thing for them. "I probably am," she said walking to stand in front of Oliver, "but did you really have to make this meeting so early? I'm hardly getting any sleep as it is and last time I checked both you and your merry little band work at night."

"Well with all the work we've been putting in, some gangs are starting to step up their game. So I thought we should do the same." Oliver said trying too hard to sound convincing.

"Is there something else this meeting is about," Chloe asked.

"No, no, me, John, and Emil have been talking about this and we thought that it was time to try and upgrade our gear and tactics," he said turning around to stare at the papers on the desk. Unfortunately there was one more reason that they were going to have to discuss, and the only one who didn't know about it was Chloe, and Oliver had drawn the short straw on breaking the news to her.

"O.K," she said pretending to believe him. Something's up, she thought. "Well at least I'll get to see some of the old gang again, is Clark coming too? I haven't seen him for a while."

A while as in one month and one week when the search for Clark had officially begun and the last night that Oliver had gotten a restful night's sleep. Keeping the whole thing from Chloe has been a nightmare, but what's been hell has been how to tell and see how she would react or even worse telling her why everyone was really scared. The one factor that tops them all though is what Oliver saw the night before Clark went missing.

* * *

Oliver was on his way to the Kent farm house to talk to Clark about some suspicious activity going on in Eastern Asia that indicated a restarted 33.1 lab. And knowing the Boy Scout, anything involving Lex would definitely be something that peaks his interest to go out and investigate. The other unspoken reason was to check on his friend, it had only been a few weeks since Lana, the love of Clark's life left. And because of Chloe's concern he agreed to deliver the information personally to check on him. He never thought that Chloe's fears or paranoia would ever become a reality…until that night. Pulling into the Kent driveway Oliver saw the same old farmhouse that he'd come to love, but something was off, there was no lights on in the house. The farm was practically a ghost town. Looking around Oliver only saw one faint source of light, barely seen behind the closed shutters of Clark's loft. Following the dim light Oliver walked into the barn and slowly ascended the stairs calling out ahead, "Hey Clark! Don't mean to interrupt your midnight poetry hour but I've got a little job for you!"

"Oh…uhh... Give me a minute to clean up, just, just stay down there for a second!" Clark called back.

"O.K—," Oliver started to say with a bit of confusion, _since when does Clark ever make a mess?_

"Come on up," Clark said called out.

"What's wrong Clark? Did you leave some empty ice cream tubs out from your Titanic marathon?" Oliver asked half jokingly. Luckily looking around the loft there wasn't any ice cream tubs or sad movies to be seen. Giving Oliver some confidence that everything was fine, the part that prevented a full boost of confidence was seeing Clark sitting at his desk putting a small stack of papers in one of the drawers. "What's that you got there Clark? Oh wait let me guess, is it a design for a new costume? Cause if it is I could give you some help with that, how do you feel about leather and green?"

Rising from the desk Clark turned to face Oliver with his usual million dollar smile, but Oliver could see right through his mask. He knew that look from experience when a snarky brunette broke his heart. No matter how hard Clark tried to hide his feelings Oliver could still see it, his usual clear blue eyes were red and cloudy with bags underneath. His hair was a mess and from the smell Oliver could tell there was a desperate need for a shower. Interrupting his train of thought Clark said, "No, but thanks for the offer."

"So what is it you're working on?" Oliver said reaching for a crumbled paper on the desk.

"Something that's not finished and I would appreciate it if you don't ask," Clark said with a stern warning in his voice. Before Oliver could get a look at the words on the paper Clark snatched it out of his hands and turned it to ashes with his heat vision. _O.K. something is defiantly not right here._ Before Oliver could voice his confusion Clark cut him off, "Sorry, I just…need it to be perfect," trying to reassure him of his well being, both for Oliver and more for himself.

"Yeah umm, O.K. well I'm going forget that and get to the reason I came," Oliver said handing him the folder with the mission speculations. "I know how you feel about Lex so I thought you might like to help out with a 33.1 we found in East Asia. You know, give him a taste of your righteous justice," he said with a smile trying to take some of the awkwardness out of the situation.

"I'm in but when do you want me out there," Clark asked looking over the files.

"The team is leaving on the plane tomorrow at ten, so you can meet us at the landing pad or join us on the plane and I promise you can pick one of the in-flight movies," Oliver said.

"As tempting as that sounds Oliver I think I'll just meet you guys there," Clark said putting the file down.

"O.K. then I'll see you in Asia but before I go can I get a bottle of water or something for the ride back," he asked hoping Clark would leave for a minute to try and look at the papers he was working on. "Sure there should be one in the house so just give me a minute." Clark said walking down the stairs at his normal speed.

Once he was out of the barn Oliver grabbed as many crumbled up papers as he could and hid them in his pockets hoping to look at them when we got back to Metropolis. Then looking back at the stairs to make sure Clark wasn't back yet, he walked over to the desk to try and look at the papers Clark hid in the desk drawer. Opening the drawer Oliver was confused when he saw that laying on top of the paper was a metal rod as long as his forearm. Grabbing it he recognized the feel of leather at the bottom and out of fear pulled the top of the metal rod off to reveal one of his worst fears. Underneath the metal, which he realized was lead, was a glowing green dagger sharpened to a point. _What the hell is Clark doing with something like this?! _

Panicking Oliver sheathed the dagger and put it in his coat pocket and went to close the drawer. But out of the corner of his eye Oliver stopped and looked at the name written on the paper at the top of the stack. There in the middle of the paper was Oliver's name written in Clark's handwriting, before temptation could get the better of him Oliver heard Clark's footsteps at the bottom of the stairs. "Here you go Oliver and I'll see you tomorrow at the landing pad in Asia," he said as he reached the top of the stairs.

"Thanks Clark I'll see you there," Oliver said grabbing the water bottle and rushing out to his car. On the drive back Oliver's mind was racing trying to figure out what was going on with Clark. And the crumbled up papers in his pocket did not help with that. The papers felt like they burning a hole in his pocket so the sooner Oliver could read them the better. But first the dagger had to be taken care of.

After reaching Watchtower he rushed to his equipment locker and placed the dagger inside and locked it. _I doubt that will do much but at least it's away from Clark so he can't do anything stupid with it. _Taking a seat at one of the desks Oliver pulled the papers out of his pocket and set them on the table. The sight of the papers caused Oliver's stomach to tense up in fear of what might be written on the pages in front of him. Reaching out for one of them, he slowly smoothed it out to try and make out the faded words written. The thing that made Oliver's heart almost stop was seeing that it was addressed to him. Taking a deep breath Oliver started to read the faded ink on the page:

_Dear Oliver,_

_You have been one of the best friends that I could have ever asked for, and one of the best fighters I know too. You were always the leader that I tried to be and whenever I was put on the spot to lead, I just thought what would Oliver do? You inspired me to become the leader that I was and helped me to branch out to save more people, both in Metropolis and in places all over the world. Th_

After that the rest was either crossed out or too faded to read and from what Oliver had just red he didn't want to know what was written. It didn't take much brainpower to figure out what was happening…Clark was going to kill himself.

* * *

Coming back to the present Oliver let out a deep breath and turned to face Chloe, this was going to be harder then it seemed. Chloe had a smile on her face from the anticipation of seeing all her friends again. "Chloe I need to tell you something, you're probably not gonna like," Oliver said grabbing Chloe's shoulders making sure he had her full attention.

A look of confusion spread across Chloe's face in response to Oliver's actions but it definitely caught her attention. "Alright Oliver go ahead, but if you ask me to marry you I just might have to decline," she said trying to figure what was causing the sudden change in the mood.

"Chloe I'm serious here! Please just listen you need to hear this before the rest of the team gets here," this time Oliver's voice raised slightly. Whether out of anger and frustration or out of pure sadness even Oliver didn't know, but now he had to deal with the task at hand. "The reason you haven't seen Clark in a while is because he's disappeared. Me and the team have been searching everywhere for him and we can hardly find any trace of him."

"What do you mean he disappeared? Did he get kidnapped or something? I thought you told me he was doing fine," Chloe said her voice filled with frustration and fear for her best friend.

"I lied, all the team knows, but you and that's the other reason I called the team together, to make a plan to find him." Letting go of Chloe's shoulders, Oliver walked over to his locker and pulled out the kryptonite dagger and the unfinished letters. After reading the unfinished letter addressed to him, Oliver looked over the others he managed to grab and found that they were all supposed to go to different members of the team. Looking at them in his hands Oliver sighed and turned to face Chloe who looked to be on the verge of tears from what she didn't want to hear. "When I went to check on Clark I found these in one of the desk drawers in the loft," he said handing her the letters, "but what you're really not going to like is what this is." Unsheathing the dagger Chloe saw the brilliant green glow of the rock see all so familiar with. "Those papers are drafts," Oliver said plainly pointing at them with the dagger.

"Drafts to what, Oliver?"

"Drafts to suicide notes that Clark wrote," he said "we didn't want to tell you in case it was nothing but after he disappeared and we couldn't find him, we knew that this might be for real."

Looking down at the pages in her hands Chloe skimmed over each of them looking at the names that they were addressed to: Oliver, Emil, Bart, Victor Zatanna, and almost every other member of the team except for her. Looking at the words written tears started to fall onto the crumbled pages but emotions began to rise within Chloe. Anger being a chief one among them; how could the people she considered friends keep this from her?! Did they not consider her apart of the team or did they truly not want to worry her over what could have been nothing? The conflicting emotion was sadness and confusion pointed straight at her so called "best friend." _We have been friends since we were kids, we've shared all kinds of secrets together, and Clark usually tells me everything that wrong, just like I do to him. So why didn't he confide this to me?!_

The sea of emotions within Chloe was so great that it made her collapse to her knees; Oliver quickly sheathed the dagger and rushed to comfort his friend. "Chloe I promise you we will find him, but right now you to need to be strong both for yourself and Clark's," he said hugging his friend trying to calm her down. "The others are going to get here soon and we are going to figure out where Clark is, O.K.?

Wiping up the tears Chloe slowly and shakily rose to her feet, trying to get some balance in the spinning room. Everything in her world had just been turned upside down and she didn't know what to do. Weakly she turned to Oliver and nodded, and not a moment too soon because the rest of the team slowly started to file into the room. The mood was grim as Oliver looked over everyone and started to speak.

"We all know we we're here. One of our best friends is missing and what's worse is that we think he may be trying to kill himself," The last part came out a little shaky as Oliver choked on his own words. Everyone else tensed up as the words were said, mainly because no one wanted to believe that it was true. "Clark has always been there for us when we needed him, whether when that was saving us from a burning building, or from a threat within ourselves. He was always there to help us regardless of the risks involved. He also brought out the best of each of us and helped bring us together as a team. And now it's our turn to save him, we at least owe him that much." The room was almost completely silent as everyone let Oliver's words sink in and thought about the magnitude of what was happening. Of course the silence didn't last long.

"Ummmm good speech Oliver but can we move this along? Mi amigo isn't going to wait around forever for us to save him." Everyone turned to see Bart standing there just looking at Oliver with his usual goofy smile. Turning to see the shocked expressions staring at him Bart threw his arms up and said the only thing he could think of to justify his comment. "What? We all know that Clark isn't the patient kind when it comes to saving someone."

With that the mood lifted and smiles cracked across all the faces in the room with a few faint chuckles or giggles. _Leave it to Bart to make us smile in the worst situation, Chloe thought._ Turning to look at Oliver, Chloe waited to see what the next step was.

"Alright, alright let's get done to work then." Oliver said as he brought up various maps and charts and spoke about the various tasks he wanted everyone to complete.

Chloe couldn't help but smile as she looked across the room at all her friends, seeing them all come together to save the savior of them all. It seemed a little funny to her, looking out the window that she stared through earlier she felt the uneasiness of the morning disappear and be replaced with a new sense of determination. The determination to save her best friend, "Don't worry Clark, this time I'm going to save you." She said at a whisper, one that was so low only he could hear her. Little did she know that he had heard it.


End file.
